Olivier Adam studies several species of cetaceans including sperm whales, blue whales, orca, dolphins and humpback whales. In 2007, he began the analysis of the whalesong and described their voice generator. Later, his interest included the mother/calf relationship. He is the curator of the Baleinopolis exhibition currently opened at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris.

© Anita Pouchard
Camille Aubry is a French graphic artist based in Bristol. She graduated as an architect in Paris before completing an MA in Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts. Camille is a resident of Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol, where she explores how to take her scribing and live drawing practice to the next level with the help of creative technologies. Her on-going graphic novel A Journey to Motherhood was longlisted in both 2018 and 2019 for the Laydeez Do Comics Award and is currently being published as a blog series by Graphic Medicine.

© Paul Grandsard
Géraldine Bajard is a French writer and director educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in France and the German Film & Television Academy in Berlin, where she graduated and directed several short films. She is a long-time co-writer and artistic collaborator of Jessica Hausner (Lourdes, Amour Fou) with whom she co-wrote Little Joe (Best Actress Award for Emily Beecham at Cannes Film festival 2019). She is currently developing her second feature film as a director/writer after The Edge which premiered at Locarno Film Festival.

Fehinti Balogun describes himself as a British Nigerian born in Greenwich who had never been involved in the environmental crisis until he learnt what it meant for himself and his family. Since then, he has been attempting to raise awareness about the climate crisis from the perspective of communities of colour, working with Extinction Rebellion to put pressure on law makers to make important changes in the face of climate change.

Philippe Bertrand is an artist, researcher, educational engineer and co-founder of the interdisciplinary art group BeAnotherLab.org. He is also a PhD candidate in Psychology at the Université Paris Descartes and the Centre de Recherches Interdisciplinaires, his research focusing on body cognition, social psychology, education, and the design of VR teaching technologies for enhancing empathic capacities.

© JF PAGA
Pascal Bruckner is one of the most influential intellectuals in France. Among his most famous works are the essays Temptation of Innocence (1995, Prix Médicis de l’Essai), The Tyranny of Guilt (2006); and the novels Evil Angels (1981 – adapted as a film by Roman Polanski) and They Stole our Beauty (1997 – Prix Renaudot). His last essay A Brief Eternity will be published in its English translation by Polity Press.

Joanna Bryson is an expert in intelligence – both natural and artificial. With degrees in Social and Computer Sciences from Chicago, Edinburgh and MIT, and her policy voice is heard in the UN, EU, CoE, OSCE, and OECD. From February 2020, Bryson will be Professor of Ethics and Technology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Mercedes Bunz is Senior Lecturer in Digital Society at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London (The Internet of Things, Polity 2018, co-published with Graham Meikle). Her research explores how digital technology transforms knowledge and, with it, power. She is currently conducting research on how AI relocates medical knowledge supported by the Wellcome Trust, and is collaborating with the Serpentine Galleries’ Creative AI lab.

Imogen Davis is the co-founder of Native, a modern British restaurant focused on sustainability and provenance. Having grown up in rural Northamptonshire, Davis has always had an affinity with nature. As a born hunter-gatherer, she mastered the arts of foraging, plucking and skinning with ease, from an early age. Davis’ incredible palate for Britain’s wild food has been widely recognised, notably having been named as one of Grace Dent’s ’10 People to Watch in the Food Industry’.

Cyril de Commarque (b.1970) lives and works in London. Commarque has had numerous exhibitions and an acclaimed sound performance in London for which he built a 25-metre-long polished/mirrored boat sculpture entitled Fluxland along the river Thames. His works have been subject to numerous solo shows and featured in prominent group shows, including the Macro Museum, the Grand Palais, The Fondation Louis Vuitton, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini during the Venice Bienniale.

David Edgerton is Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology at King’s College London. He is the author of many works including England and the Aeroplane (Penguin), Warfare State: Britain 1920-1970 (Cambridge) and The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 (Profile Books) translated into French as Quoi de Neuf? (Seuil). His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: a Twentieth-century History (Penguin).

© Ph. Lebruman
After studying at the Beaux-Arts in Rouen and at the Fresnoy video art studio in France, Benoit Forgeard directed several shorts, How to Succeed in Life in 2012 and France is a Gas selected in the ACID selection of the Cannes Film Festival and released in 2016. He also directed a series on cinema for Arte and published L’Année du cinéma 2027, a collection of critics on imaginary films.

© Emmanuelle Marchadour
Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science, technology and the environment, based at the EHESS in Paris. He has published several books : L’Apocalypse Joyeuse. Une histoire du risque technologique (Paris, Le Seuil, 2012); The shock of the Anthropocene with C. Bonneuil (Verso, 2016) and Les révoltes du ciel. Une autre histoire du changement climatique with F. Locher (Le Seuil, 2020).

© Djinane AlSuwayeh
Sophie Hackford is a futurist. She has given 160 provocative talks to boards and executive teams on novel science and tech. Sophie co-founded 1715Labs: a spinout from Oxford University’s Astrophysics Department, labelling data to train algorithms. She is on the board of two growth-stage startups. Sophie previously worked at WIRED Magazine, at Singularity University on the NASA Research Park in Silicon Valley, and Oxford University where she raised $120m for frontier-bending research.

© Quentin Chevrier
Jean-Luc Hervé studied composition at the conservatoire de Paris with Gérard Grisey, where he received a Premier Prix in composition. In 1997 he received the Goffredo Petrassi prize for his composition Ciels for orchestra. He was composer-in-research at IRCAM and founded the group Biotop(e) with Thierry Blondeau and Oliver Schneller. His works have been performed by ensembles such as Orchestre National de France and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio-France. He is currently a teacher of composition at the Conservatoire de Boulogne-Billancourt.

Owen Hindley is a digital artist exploring new ways of creating experiences in theatre, music and arts through collaborations between technology and traditional practices.

© Andrew Sutton
Philip Hoare’s book Leviathan or, The Whale won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. It was followed in 2013 by The Sea Inside, and in 2017 by RisingTideFallingStar, the third of his sea-themed works. An experienced broadcaster, curator and filmmaker, he is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton and co-curator of the Moby-Dick Big Read project.

© Florine Bonaventure
Marguerite Humeau is an artist living and working in London. She received her MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2011. Humeau’s work stages the crossing of great distances in time and space, transitions between animal and mineral, and encounters between personal desires and natural forces. Solo and group exhibitions of her work have been held at the New Museum, New York; Tate Britain; Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Museion, Bolzano; and C L E A R I N G, New York/ Brussels. Her work is also part of the collections of MoMA, Centre Pompidou, Tate Britain, and Aishti Foundation, Beirut.

Lorena Jaume-Palasí is the founder of The Ethical Tech Society, a fact and theory based non-profit initiative focused on automation and digitisation processes with regards to their social relevance. In 2017 she was appointed by the Spanish government to the High Level Expert Council on Artificial Intelligence and Big Data and is one of the 100 experts of the Cotec Foundation. In 2018 she was awarded the Theodor Heuss Medal “for her contribution to a differentiated view of algorithms and their mechanisms of action”.

© Philippe Matsas/Leemage
Gaspard Koenig is a writer, philosopher, and author of a dozen novels and essays. He publishes a weekly column in Les Echos and teaches philosophy at Sciences-Po. In 2013, he founded the classical liberal think-tank GenerationLibre, now ranked among the Top European Think Tanks. His latest book is La Fin de l’individu: Voyage d’un philosophe au pays de l’intelligence artificielle (L’Observatoire, 2019).

After studying economics, François-Ghislain Morillion visited a factory in China, discovering the reality of globalisation. Working alongside Sébastien Kopp, he discovered fair trade and principles of sustainable economy and decided to reinvent a meaningful product of their generation: the sneaker. They founded VEJA in 2004 with the goal of creating a positive chain from producer to consumer, mixing a minimalist aesthetic with innovation.

Damian Murphy is Professor in Sound and Music Computing at the Department of Electronic Engineering (University of York) and the University Research Theme Champion for Creativity. His research focuses on immersive audio and acoustics as he is an active sound artist. Damian is also the director of XR Stories, a £15m worth Creative Industries R&D Partnership exploring interactive and immersive storytelling for the UK’s creative screen industries.

Thomas Pausz is a French designer and graduate of the Royal College of Arts, now based in Reykjavik. He is an interdisciplinary artist whose works explore innovations in living technology and bio-design, often collaborating with scientists and philosophers to examine the human impact on the environment. His recent exhibitions include The Swamp Pavillion featured at the Venice Biennale (2018) and Non Flowers for a Hoverfly at the V&A London (2019).

© Bérangère Lopez-Oros
Fourth great-granddaughter of a Norman privateer, Aline Pénitot often sails across the oceans. Moored for several years in electro-acoustic studios, Aline now produces documentaries and composes music for Radio France and others. Recently, she has produced four documentaries on whales and dolphins, worked on the interface of human-whale music games and is involved in a music/science research project with Olivier Adam and Nadia Sénéchal.

© Avramidis
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos is Professor of Law & Theory and director of the University of Westminster’s Law & Theory Lab; he is also an artist working with performance, photography and picpoetry, and the author of The Book of Water published in Greek and currently prepared for publication in English, Italian and French. He has just completed his new novel And Our Distance Became Water.

© Raphaël Lugassy
London-based French pianist and composer RIOPY began to teach himself the piano at an early age when he discovered an abandoned instrument. Without access to printed scores, he began to compose music in his head. His unique, rhythmically-driven approach to performing his own compositions soon brought him to the attention of the piano firm Steinway & Sons, which named RIOPY a Young Steinway Artist. He has performed at the Royal Opera House, Steinway Hall as well as a unique performance from inside the clock tower in St Pancras, London.

© Francesca Mantovani – Editions Gallimard
First an activist for WWF and a journalist for Terre et Océans, Elle, Voici and Grazia, Monica Sabolo is now dedicated to writing novels and screenplays. She is the author of Tout cela n’a rien à voir avec moi (Prix de Flore, 2013), Crans Montana (Grand Prix de la Société des Gens de Lettres, 2015) and Summer (2017). Her latest novel Eden (2019) was published by Gallimard.

© Terry Gates
Cellist Tessa Seymour made her televised Carnegie Hall debut in 2006 and has since been performing in Europe, Asia and the US, both as a soloist and chamber musician. In 2009, she joined the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. The same year, she won the Jean-Nicolas Firmenich Prize for cello (Verbier Festival) and was a Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholar in 2010. She embarked on her first major nationwide solo tour of the USA in 2016, performing 30 concerts in 60 days.

© Royal Academy of Arts – Marcus Leith
Yinka Shonibare CBE moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three. He returned to the UK to study Fine Art at Byam Shaw School of Art, London and Goldsmiths College, where he received his Masters in Fine Art. His interdisciplinary practice explores colonialism and post-colonialism within the context of globalisation. In 2004, he was nominated for the Turner Prize and in 2013, he was elected as a Royal Academician. His installation The British Library was recently acquired by Tate and is currently on display at Tate Modern, London until 2020.

© Nick Saffell
Dr Beth Singler is Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence, University of Cambridge. She explores the social, ethical, philosophical, and religious implications of advances in Artificial Intelligence and robotics. She has produced a series of short documentaries on AI, and the first, Pain in the Machine, was the 2017 AHRC Best Research Film of the Year.

Joe is director of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), where he leads the UK’s learned society and professional body for geography. Prior to this he was Professor of Environment and Society and head of geography at the Open University. His academic work has focused on environmental communication, history, policy and politics. He has worked extensively with broadcast media, advising on both specific programmes and broad strategy in relation to the presentation of environmental issues to mass audiences. He is also the director of Smith of Derby Ltd., a 160-year-old public clock making company.

© Benjamin Ealovega
Pianist Alexander Soares is a graduate of the University of Cambridge and the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. After winning the Gold Medal in the prestigious Royal Over-Seas League Competition in 2015 and being selected as a solo artist by City Music Foundation, Alexander gained a reputation as a leading exponent of contemporary French repertoire. Released by Rubicon Classics in 2019, his debut album Notations & Sketches is a Gramophone Editor’s Choice.

Born in New Zealand, André Spicer is an academic and professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Cass Business School, City, University of London. He founded ETHOS: The Centre for Responsible Enterprise there. He is an expert in the areas of Organisational Behaviour, Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility. Spicer has published extensively in top scholarly journals such as Organization Science, Academy of Management Annals, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies. He has also published the books Contesting the Corporation (Cambridge), Unmasking the Entrepreneur (Edward Elgar), Understanding Organizations (Sage), Metaphors we Lead By (Routledge), and The Wellness Syndrome (Polity). He is a frequent commentator in the global media outlets such as Financial Times, CNN, BBC, CNBC, Channel Four, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Times, Telegraph, and many others.

Jessica Sweidan cofounded The Synchronicity Foundation with her husband. Exploring how to have a greater impact within the conservation realm – and recognising that biodiversity loss was the least well appreciated and most poorly addressed of all – they launched Synchronicity Earth, a UK-registered conservation charity, in 2009. Jessica is also an IUCN Patron of Nature and was appointed Honorary Conservation Fellow at the Zoological Society of London in March 2015.

Originally trained in Art (BA) and Archaeology (Msc), Melanie Terrade has led various educational projects in education, for children and youth services in hospitals. She has also worked as an archaeological illustrator in labs, museums and did fieldwork. Melanie set up Tinkamel, a social enterprise designing cross-curricular educational projects based on experimentation, discovery & play to share her passion for art, sciences and technology. She offers workshops where participants can discover, play and explore.

© Radio France – GuillaumeDecalf
Christian Urbita has studied violin making all across Europe. He finds inspiration in nature and tailors instruments according to the musician’s energy. He restored Amati, Stradivarius and Guarneri violins in the prestigious W.E. Hill & Sons workshop, and established the European association of luthiers and bow makers (AELA). As the president of the festival Musique sur Ciel, each year he brings together luthiers, bow makers, musicians and composers.

“We are not just a fashion label, we are an ideology” ~ VIN + OMI

VIN + OMI are award winning fashion and multi media designers who work internationally. Focusing on sustainable approaches to design and fashion through eco innovations and social impact projects makes VIN + OMI one of the leading pioneering eco fashion brands today.

“VIN + OMI are the future of fashion“ – Debbie Harry

Salomé Voegelin is an artist, writer and researcher engaged in listening as a socio-political practice. As a researcher she works at the forefront of the new knowledge economy established by sound studies and sound art, turning to the invisible and mobile dimension of art and the everyday to achieve new insights that can deliver novel answers to pressing issues such as the climate emergency, social exclusion, asymmetries of belonging and education. Voegelin is the author of three influential books: Listening to Noise and Silence, 2010, Sonic Possible Worlds, 2014, and The Political Possibility of Sound, 2018.

Sangseok You is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems at HEC Paris. His research focuses on understanding how teams working with technologies operate and promote team outcomes. Topics of his research encompass human-robot collaboration, artificial intelligence, and virtual and distributed collaboration in open source software context.

President of the Oxford Muse Foundation and Amar Foundation for Refugees; Emeritus Fellow and former Dean of St Antony’s College (University of Oxford) and Professeur honoris causa at HEC Paris, Theodore Zeldin is the author of The Hidden Pleasures of Life: A New Way of Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future; Conversation; An Intimate History of Humanity and A History of French Passions. Now as an Associate Fellow of Green-Templeton College Oxford, he is active in its Future of Work project. Zeldin has been elected a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature, and a member of the European Academy. He has been decorated as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Commander of the Légion d’Honneur and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, and with Britain’s top award for History, the Wolfson Prize.